


i am quantum physics, my witness brings me into existence

by asinineAbbreviations



Series: Benrey dates a car [1]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transformers, Not Beta Read, Other, Pre-Relationship, i might continue this, only cause yknow. robot in disguise, slight dehumanization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26141371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asinineAbbreviations/pseuds/asinineAbbreviations
Summary: Benrey gets a car.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Series: Benrey dates a car [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1972225
Comments: 34
Kudos: 134





	i am quantum physics, my witness brings me into existence

**Author's Note:**

> heyy its ya boyy skinny penis  
> look. i have a disease called mashing stuff i like together and its terminal.

It’s not like Benrey  _ needed _ a car. He could teleport just fine, thank you very much. But he had picked up how to drive (and was given a very probably illegal driving license from Black Mesa) and to be honest, he kind of liked driving. Liked travelling in general. Sure, being able to instantly zap anywhere you wanted was nice, but there was - a  _ thing  _ about being in a vehicle, any kind of vehicle, that just calmed something in his soul. Sometimes Benrey would go to the little dingy New Mexico town just outside of the facility, buy a ticket for the farthest place the rattling old buses would reach, and chill on one of the chairs, looking out at the desert. It was soothing.

Carpooling with Tommy was also pretty fun. The older man was a lot less willing to use his powers willy-nilly, and nearly always forgoed his weird dimension-walking powers (Tommy had tried to explain it to him one time, but he still never managed to get how he and Mr. Coolatta managed it) in order to drive to work. When Benrey could be bothered to wake up on time, he’d hop in Tommy’s old Toyota Corolla and rest his head on the windowsill, half-listening to whatever Tommy was saying. Not that he wasn’t interested in what the other man was saying; but Benrey wasn’t the greatest listener at the best of times, and besides, it wasn’t particularly like Tommy minded. He just let Benrey stare out the window while he mainly talked to fill up the silence. 

So, yeah. It was less the necessity of travelling, and more the enjoyment of it. Even riding the tram to his section at Black Mesa was fun enough sometimes, even if he had to close his eyes to protect from the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. So when Tommy started picking up his boyfriend to take to work as well, Benrey decided he might as well get a car. It wasn’t like Black Mesa didn’t pay well (especially with y’know. The threat of Benrey becoming a horrible alien monstrosity and wrecking the facility) and though he liked Darnold he didn’t want to third-wheel the couple on their car-dates. He was the best wingmen, and wingmen don’t stick around for the action, no matter the amount of times Tommy flushed and told him they didn’t do anything ‘untoward’ in the car. 

Benrey didn’t want a flashy car, just something comfortable that he could drive easy and long. He and Tommy had gone to a second-hand car dealership to look at the vehicles there. A lot were old junkers, and some were too new and shiny for his taste. Tommy had pointed out one that’d looked promising, but after both of them had felt the inside seats they cringed and decided to look around some more.

He was almost out of luck when he saw it. An orange car with silver highlights, covered in a thin layer of dust that made the paint look muted. Inside was roomy enough for Benrey to stretch his legs, and the seat lay back down enough that he could easily see himself sleeping there. The radio seemed to be working - tuned into a local rock station when he turned it on - and there was an air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror that Benrey batted around a little happily. One odd thing, though, was the logo on the front, back, and steering wheel. Benrey wouldn’t call himself really knowledgeable about cars, but he didn’t recognise the brand at all. When the dealer was asked, she shrugged and just said “It’s probably one of those fancy Japanese brands,” and explained her brother worked for a towing company and often dropped some cars off at the dealership for a small fee, so she didn’t know where it came from. All she knew was that it drove like a beauty.

After driving it around, Benrey couldn’t help but agree with her. It handled amazingly, and something felt -  _ warm  _ about it. Like he was safe, wrapped up in a cozy blanket. After dropping Tommy at his house with a thanks for coming with him, he decided to drive around the long New Mexico roads for a while. It wasn’t busy this far out - most of the traffic came from commuters to Black Mesa who had the luck to live outside the facility - and having the stretching streets to himself was nice. He leant forwards to turn the radio on, and decided to switch it to country. Hell yeah.

Suddenly the needle jerked around, and settled back on the rock station it’d been on before.

“What the hell?” Benrey murmured, reaching to turn the knob again. This time when he twisted it, the needle didn’t move at all, stuck on the same frequency. The rock music wasn’t bad, he could definitely chill out to it, but it wasn’t nice to realise the radio was busted after already shelling out the cash to buy it. Ah well. He could just buy one of those bluetooth radio thingies. Benrey’s epic spotify playlist of the century.

After driving round a bit, he pulled into his as-of-yet unused parking space in the car park of his flat building. Benrey turned the engine off and then patted the steering wheel.

“Nini,” he said, exiting and locking the car. He should probably give it a name, he thought. Maybe Josh? He’d definitely enjoy having a vehicle named after him, especially since his own shitty little picanto had been written off recently. Shouldn’t have tried to play smash while doing doughnuts.

Josh (he’d been right - his friend had been flattered) was a pretty good car, all things considered. Sure, it wasn’t the most fuel efficient, had a weird radio - it turned out it hadn’t been stuck on the rock station like Benrey had first thought, and just randomly switched radio stations - and sometimes the car wouldn’t start properly until he put his seatbelt on (and would immediately stop if he unbuckled it), but it was comfy and and  _ his _ . Benrey didn’t really have many of his own possessions - his apartment was technically owned by Black Mesa, and most of the stuff he owned was under the one-sided agreement that the company could get rid of them if they didn’t like how he was doing things. And sure, it wasn’t like he’d bought Josh with his own money, but Tommy had been insistent that Benrey didn’t need to pay him back. Apparently he and Mr. Coolatta were fucking loaded.

There were a few quirks about Josh that did bother Benrey though. Sometimes when the heat got too much, the aircon would kick on by itself without him even reaching for it. He figured maybe it had climate controls, but he couldn’t find any settings for it anywhere. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the cool air, but getting it unexpectedly was not a comfortable change in temperature for him. The bluetooth radio dongle he’d ordered worked fine, though sometimes the songs would skip a few before settling down on one. Benrey wasn’t sure whether it was just something wrong with Josh’s radio; after all, it did have a habit of changing stations. Plus the fact that he couldn’t open the bonnet at all - it wasn’t like he needed to, but it didn’t bode well for future garage visits. It was all just a bit… odd.

Benrey wasn’t normally bothered by ‘odd’. He worked at Black Mesa. One of his best friends was the son of some weird alien.  _ He  _ was a weird alien. His coworkers consisted of a test-tube baby, a cyborg, and several hundred clones, and many more weirdos the facility had on its payroll. So, while the things strange about Josh did make him wonder a little bit, Benrey wasn’t particularly fussed by it all.

At least, not until Josh jerked control out of his hands one day.

Benrey had been giving Tommy a ride. Tommy’s car was in the garage - it needed its MOT doing - and Mr. Coolatta was apparently busy with some - whatever work he did. So Benrey took it upon himself to graciously give his friend a ride to the supermarket to get some shopping in. Sunkist lounged on the back seat, head stuck out the back window, tongue flapping in the warm wind.

“L-look,” Tommy was saying, waving his hands about. “The O- the OSHA guidelines don’t particularly include, include aliens.”

“So then I should uh. Be able to do anything I want at work then?” Benrey said.

“No! Jus-just because you aren’t specified - mentioned in the rules doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow, them. And I’m pretty sure that teleporting out of nowhere behind Dr. Bubby and, almost making him drop his - his beaker is against safe workplace rules.”

“Huh?” Benrey blinked. Tommy huffed at him, and he screwed his face up in a grin, teeth glinting. “It’s fine bro, Bubby’s fuckin. Fuckin fireproof I doubt like an explosion or some shit would’ve hurt him.”

“That’s not the poi - the point, Benrey!” Tommy said. He was smiling behind his hand though.

“Another one - another one of Benrey’s classic pranks.” His shitty Coomer impression wrought a laugh out of the older man. It startled Sunkist a bit, who stuck her head back in the car and gave a deep ‘BOOF’ before resuming her activity of seeing how many bugs she could eat in a single go. A few orbs of sweet voice, violet turning a pale blue, drifted out of Benrey’s mouth and through the window.

“Flowery violet to - to a sky blue means it’s nice to spend time with you!” Tommy unnecessarily translated. “Aww, Benrey, I like spending time with you too!”

Benrey flushed a little, blue staining his cheeks. “What’re you - you fuckin gay dude?”

“Yep!”

That made Benrey laugh too. He turned slightly towards Tommy, and was about to make a snarky comment about him purportedly cheating on Darnold with him when the other man let out a harsh cry.

Snapping his eyes back to the road, Benrey flung himself back in his seat as a giant oil tanker swerved towards them, the driver having clearly lost control. He was frozen. Thoughts rushed through his head. Yeah Benrey wasn’t going to die, but Tommy might, and this would definitely hurt like hell, and probably write Josh off, and regenerating from something like this was a bitch to do anyway, and - 

Unable to move the steering wheel, stuck like a deer in headline, Benrey could only look on in horror as - as - as Josh’s wheel jerked itself to the side, veering off the road and into the brush. The car shook up and down several times as it drove across the uneven ground, chattering Benrey’s teeth and almost certainly ruining the suspension, but eventually rolled to a halt farther up the road. Sunkist whined a little from behind them. Tommy, who had also been paralysed by fear, blinked a few times before quickly looking at the bit of road they’d just been on, then to Benrey.

“Tha - that was pretty - pretty fucking good reaction times,” he said, hyperventilating a little. Benrey just stared down at the steering wheel under his hands.

The steering wheel he hadn’t moved.

The steering wheel that had moved itself.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It was.”

\--

So, maybe Benrey’s car was a little sentient. Or at least, smart enough in some capacity to know when to move itself. Or maybe even fucking haunted, god knows Benrey wouldn’t discount ghosts with his own skeleton minions running around. Either way Josh was definitely  _ not  _ a normal car. In the few days following the close call, he’d tried to see any out-of-the-ordinary behaviour coming from the vehicle. Trying to see what it was up to. Nothing, at least that he could tell though. When he wasn’t in it, Josh was just a normal car, and when Benrey was in it, Josh still just had its weird quirks.

Benrey was a little hesitant to talk to Tommy about it. It was a bit weird to try and tell your friend that it was your car and not your amazing trigger fingers that managed to save both your lives. Plus, Josh seemed to tone down the strangeness when anyone else was present in the car. Almost like it wanted to keep itself a secret. And yet, Josh was apparently fine with Benrey seeing what it was doing.

He didn’t try talking to the car. Sure, he talked out loud to himself in the car, rambling about this and that, even before he noticed all the weirdness going on with Josh. And after too - if the car was haunted, then maybe the ghost appreciated Benrey’s in-depth explanation of how to speedrun Banjo Tooie.

It seemed like the two had come to a kind of understanding. Benrey would off-handedly talk to himself about wanting to listen to tunes he had on his playlist, and Josh would whiz the needle on the radio around. He’d try to unbuckle his seatbelt before the car fully stopped, only for it to tighten a little around him as it stopped. The aircon would blast on automatically when Benrey started sweating a little, and after an incident involving some spilt McDonalds and Josh proceeding to lock its door for a week if he came near with any food, Benrey would be extra careful with whatever liquid or snacks he was holding. It was nice, kinda. An alien and his car. Put that on your TV Tropes.

The dynamic didn’t last long, unfortunately. One morning when Benrey was in a bit of a funk, he decided to drive to work for once. Technically, the first time he decided to do it. Teleporting was a lot more efficient, and he got to stay in bed longer. A win-win. However, his dumb meat brain was pounding from the inside, like a lizard trying to escape its shell, and his emotions were more in the grey-zone for the morning. So Benrey was like, why not go on a drive to get his stupid grey matter up and chugging properly.

Josh was quiet this morning. Benrey had winced slightly when the radio automatically started up as he turned the keys, but luckily it seemed that Josh was better at getting social cues than he was. Go figure. A light breeze was flowing from the aircon, soothing the ache in his head slightly.

Benrey gazed blankly out the windscreen, only slightly paying attention to nudge Josh in the right direction. The car was doing most of his job for him thankfully. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to properly drive all the way to Black Mesa like this. To be honest, Benrey didn’t think he should be working like this. But, whatever. Big boss pays the bills.

When they were about a half-mile out from Black Mesa, the first sign popped up. Benrey had seen them before - all ‘BLACK MESA IS A PRIVATE FACILITY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PENISISED’ and no fun. It wasn’t really like anyone who  _ wasn’t  _ headed to the facility would be going down this road anyway. The good thing about building your top secret evil government experimence building in the middle of nowhere is that people didn’t tend to stumble on it.

As the sign came into view, Benrey spared a lazy glance at it before returning his eyes to the road in front. He felt himself be flung forward slightly though as Josh came to a screeching halt, killing its engines. Taking a moment to catch his breath, Benrey looked down at the steering wheel, then at the keys. They were still in and turned. He wiggled them slightly, trying to get the car to start again. No such luck. 

“C’mon, man,” he moaned, leaning forward slightly and resting his head on the steering wheel. “I just wanna go to work.”

Still nothing.

Benrey sighed, and moved to unbuckle his seatbelt, when all of a sudden the lights blinked back on and the engine continued purring. He cautiously moved his hands to the wheel.

“Oh, you’re finally done with your fuckin. Lame-ass pissy fit huh? Dumb li’l cardude finally gonna let me get to Black Me-”

He was barely finished with his sentences before the wheels squealed and shot him and Josh forwards. Not along the road, however, as the axles turned and lead them out into the desert, away from the facility.

“Woah, woah,” Benrey grimaced. “Calm down please? Please don’t drive off?”

Josh paid no heed, still speeding away from the road. Benrey considered his options. He could just noclip out, and make it to work, but that would leave his car running off into the wilderness which he. Didn’t particularly want. Or, he could stay and see what Josh was gonna do. This was the preferable option, especially considering Benrey hadn’t even particularly wanted to  _ go  _ to work that day. Not that he ever really wanted to do his job at all - he had better things to be doing - but on days like he was having today, his motivation was essentially kaput.

So, he just leant back in his seat, letting his car take him wherever it was going.

After about half an hour of straight driving, Josh curved around a smallish mesa, before coming to a halt. Benrey’s seat belt unbuckled itself, and his door flung open.

“What uhhh. What’re you wanting me to do, friend?” Benrey asked. He could kind of tell - Josh wanted him outside. Being dragged out to a random spot didn’t exactly do wonders for his mood though, so Benrey was feeling a little spiteful and definitely unhelpful.

The driver-side door slammed open and shut a few times.

“You want to slam me? At least fuckin, buy me dinner first bro.”

The car rattled, like it was letting out a loud and pained groan, before the bonnet popped open. Okay, that got Benrey a little intrigued. He decided to wait a moment more though, just to see how frustrated Josh got (who proceeded to waggled the bonnet like a person waving a toy at a cat), and then got out. The sun, still rising, was on the other side of the mesa, casting a nice shadow over them both. Benrey moved over towards the front of the car, before stopping dead as he got a good look at where the engine should’ve been.

That… was not what a car normally looked like.

Instead of the engine, alternator, and whatever other car guts were supposed to be there, there was a distinctly inhuman mass of wire, thick cables glowing slightly, strange gears and pulleys, and some weird contraptions that did not look familiar in the slightest. Lights glittered along coils, pulsing slightly as Benrey looked at them. Something in the mass of alien car parts rumbled slightly.

What really caught Benrey’s eye was the painful-looking clamp tightened around some of the wires and moving parts, with a familiar logo emblazoned on it.

“Oh,” he said. “Black Mesa did some fucked up stuff to you too, huh? Join the club. It’s shitty and we don’t even get free shirts.”

The rumbling became more of a keening noise, as if asking something. For help?

“Do you, uh. D’you want me to try and, uh, get that thing out?” Benrey asked. He wouldn’t consider himself a scientist or even a mechanic, but a) most security guards at Black Mesa were trained to put up with whatever havoc the scientists there managed to wreak at any given time, and b) the idea of leaving something that seemed to be hurting his friend in was something that Did Not appeal to Benrey at all.

Josh began rumbling again, and flapped the bonnet a little as though in agreement.

“Aight dude. Just gonna warn you, this might not be comfortable.”

He leant in and found where the clamps were digging in and pressing into the cables, so he could be sure not to damage them. Without warning, he sunk his claws into the clam, prying it apart and ripping it out. The top half came loose with a gush of oil, and Benrey flung it behind them. Then, he gripped the lower part and pried it out, grimacing as the oil in it covered his hands. That wasn’t a sensation he was going to get out of his head any time soon.

Disposing of that one too (read: throwing it into the desert and likely killing some poor animals), Benrey turned back to Josh. As soon as the clamp was completely gone, the bonnet snapped shut and the car backed up a little bit. He started forwards a little, not wanting it to just abandon him in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but stopped when he noticed something about the car begin to change.

Parts moved, wheels spun up and to the side, pieces of metal unfolded from places they shouldn’t have fit, bits cracked and popped, and human-esque limbs were formed. All the whirring was too loud for Benrey to bear at this distance, and he covered his ears, wincing slightly. When it seemed like it had finished, he looked back up and removed his hands and saw - 

A 20 foot robot standing in front of him. Orange and grey (of course orange and grey, that was Josh’s paint colour) metal plates covered intricate looking inner mechanisms. Two wheels stuck out behind a torso, just peeking over the shoulder blades, with the other pair where ankles would normally be found on a human. Bright solid green eyes fluttered a bit in a grey face, the bottom half stained a slightly darker shade, before the head turned down and looked at him properly.

“Uhhhhhhhhhh,” Benrey said. The robot narrowed(?) its eyes at him, and knelt down on one knee, coming closer and really showcasing the difference in size between the two of them. Damn this stupid dimension for stopping him from having his cool large form, one thought said. Well, you always liked larger men, right? Another chimed. Shut up brain, he tried to mentally direct inwards as much as possible.

The robot opened its mouth, metal teeth glinting. “My name is Gordon Freeman,” it said, voice a low rumble that went right to Benrey’s head and almost made him flush furiously. “And I am not going back to Black Mesa.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this all in like four hours half awake. i might continue it or i might die from exhaustion. one or the other  
> also sorry for the british terms i am incapable of changing my ways


End file.
